25 January 2011

The Dominionist Machine Meddling in Uganda

Speaking of Uganda.....

In the last piece regarding Africa and many others I've mentioned how American Evangelicals often play the role of dupes and financiers for a lot of political interests.

I also mentioned the well reported role of American Evangelical groups working with the Ugandan government and actively trying to promote a Theonomic-type agenda...some even advocating the death penalty for homosexuals in Uganda.

Just in case this is the first article you read here, I'll say it again. Homosexuality is a sin, period. Homosexuals are lost people that need the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church does not work with the State to build the Kingdom of God, and the Kingdom is not built with the sword. We can't evangelize the lost if we're calling on the state to execute the lost. The Theonomic mandate perverts the typal imagery of the Old Covenant and rather than promote the Kingdom it sets a mandate for Dominion AGAINST the Gospel Commission.

The state has a task to promote order and peace, yea, to repress evil. Paul did not mean for the state to repress the evils of heresy and blasphemy....he wrote Romans 13 most likely while Nero was the emperor of Rome. He spoke in general in regard to the evil that makes society unfit for habitation and order. This evil is one that almost every society has grasped, even the most wicked...murder, theft, lying, things of that order.

The state will always fail in this task, because we live in a sin-cursed world. Some states will be better than others. Some states will be severe, some fair, some lenient.

As Christians, we're not looking for a society that allows us to get rich and fat. We're looking for peace, so we can live quiet lives, work with our hands, be salt and light to our neighbours, and speak the Word to the lost.

Historically societies that are more free and tolerant....will also prove more free and tolerant to Christian groups trying to promote the Gospel. Christians can live at peace within such Babylons.

Societies that are repressive are more unpleasant for the Church, but the Church often flourishes in such circumstances. God is glorified in weakness, in growing his Church in the face of opposition. Also, in those situations the Church maintains a level of vigilance that it will not have in a country where they're waving the flag, honouring the troops, and confusing their pronouns...we sometimes meaning the Church, sometimes meaning the nation. This is often done in the same sentence or train of thought.

When the Church agitates and tries to create a Sacral society, then you get backlash.

Peter exhorts Christians in chapter 4 of his first epistle not to suffer as a murderer, thief, or wrongdoer....one who works evil.

And he also says we should not suffer as a result of being busybodies or mischief makers in other people's matters. We should not be ones 'who look carefully on other's affairs... or after their possessions' as one commentator puts it. The idea being that we shouldn't meddle in affairs that do not concern us. This keeps in line with our other exhortations to study to be quiet and mind our own business.

The gospel of Dominionism declares that every facet of society, every particle of civilization must be transformed in the Redemptive Kingdom. All nations, Chile, Serbia, America, and Uganda must become Zion.

It seeks this goal prior to the return of Jesus Christ. Even though we alone are participating at present in The Age to Come...somehow all the people of the earth will also be compelled to do so. Babylon will become Zion...by force if necessary.

Rather than proclaim the power of Christ's Gospel, Christians are now engaged in politicking, legal tactics, fundraising, and manipulative propaganda. Since the state and all other facets of society are destined to be part of the Holy Realm, the Church works alongside them, urging them to fulfill the Transformationalist gospel all the while trying to transform them.

It's been tried before. Read a history of the Middle Ages. This agenda destroyed the Church...except for the Remnant God preserved...and created a society that benefited those at the top of the pyramid, while everyone below them received a boot in the face. If you opposed the Order, the noose, the block, or the stake awaited you.

Dominionism glories in the Middle Ages and its Christian civilization. They glory in music and art they seem to know little of. Sodomites, perverts, and madmen produced wondrous art to be sure....and somehow because they lived in a 'Judeo-Christian' civilization...their art is esteemed as most Christian...sometimes even the artists themselves are given a free pass.

Besides destroying the minds and basic reason of its adherents, Dominionism fails to understand the Biblical teaching of the Kingdom and fails to understand the Depravity of man. Despite the fact that many Dominionists are Calvinists, affirming the Total Depravity of man, they seem to think that men are capable of understanding and obeying God's laws.......it's either that or they have a VERY LOW view of what God's law is...and thus a very low view of God Himself.

So, we come to Uganda....where American Dominionists have decided to meddle. They have a Dictator-lite who has established a key strategic base for American geo-politics in northern Sub-Saharan Africa. A little unruly at times, Uganda is positioned to affect and be a player in the Congo, Rwanda, and Sudan. There's much a stake in the geo-political game, not to mention the vast resources available in the Congo. Remember Congo, formerly Zaire was ruled for years by American proxy Mobutu who was driven from power in the First Congo War.

Americans know little of what has happened in Africa over the past fifteen years or so. It's a catastrophe...and one in which it's very difficult to pin down who is right and who is wrong, who is fighting for whom and why. There are plenty of bad guys, but few that can be pointed to as serving a righteous and just cause.

Uganda is backed by the United States and Ugandan leader Museveni is an American ally and has close ties to the Evangelical group known as The Family...the group that has been promoting an extreme Christian Right agenda for Uganda. The Family, American Corporate, Defense, and Energy interests all converge in Uganda and perhaps more particularly in the person of Museveni.

Remember what I said about dupes and financiers?

Here's a blog entry from a great blog I recently discovered through a friend. It's called Yesu Melungi, written by a Ugandan. Very interesting and helpful perspectives. I've included a link. As always I don't agree 100% with him but it's well worth the read. The commentaries are very informative and I hope to share more of them soon.

The article exposes the corruption in Uganda....it's not anymore Christian than the United States is and when you do a little more research you find that the Church should not be involved in working with or supporting its government.

I tremble for the Biblical Christians who live there. Someday the backlash will come. Will it be for the gospel or for meddling in affairs that do not concern us?

Dominionists are dupes....because they think lost people can help them build the Kingdom of God, and they don't seem to understand that lost people will ALWAYS seek their own gain and their own power and will without hesitation betray and stab you in the back.

As I read this, I think of all the Right-wing Evangelicals and their gushing support of Republican politicians who are every bit as dirty and corrupt as anything you read about in Uganda. The only difference is...in America it's institutionalized, built into the bureaucracy, even respectable.

Dominionists want to change Uganda.....it's not working.

Corrupt Ugandan power-holders benefit.
American political and corporate interests benefit.
Are the Ugandan people benefiting?
Is the Ugandan Church benefiting?

Here's the link and the article. And I've included the link to the website under LINKS in the right-hand column.

Uganda the Christian Nation is Among the Most Corrupt Nations of the Earth

Kato Mivule
November 16, 2010

George Otis and his famous Transformation Videos went to Uganda and famously “documented” how Uganda was declared a “Christian Nation” by President Yoweri Museveni, the leader of Uganda since 1986.

George Otis noted how corruption was being stamped out, Parliamentary sessions were opened with prayers, Ugandan MPs were Christian, President's wife was a Christian, and how people were praying day and night for a mighty revival, and how Uganda was being “transformed” by this supposedly prayer movement.

Many missionaries, ministers, preachers, and pastors from the west have bought into such unfounded notions of Uganda being a “Christian Nation”. Interesting is that now US Evangelicals engaged in Politics are now heavily influencing undiscerning Christians in Uganda to take on the same mantle of right wing Christian Politics.

I have spoken to some US ministers who travel to Uganda and all they see is a so-called revival, yet the opposite is true, Uganda is among the most corrupt nations on earth, from preacher, prophet, to president, corruption has become the order of the day and way of life.[1] The Christian Church has become an extension of the rich, powerful, and most corrupt, as long as they can bring in the tithe. Below is an article by a Ugandan renowned journalist documenting the moral and ethical decay in Uganda the “Christian Nation”.

National events at Kololo Airstrip in Kampala like Independence Day, Labour Day and others used to last about two hours. Since 2008, they have started taking on the feel of mammoth, all-day festivals.

The main reason is that as President Yoweri Museveni has gotten more insecure in power and in his mind, a whole movement has developed to reassure him that he is still loved by his people and his stay in power is not something that should worry him.

To demonstrate this (and, no doubt, to secure their jobs and gain favours), Resident District Commissioners and NRM party officials a few days before Independence Day made it their primary assignment to mobilise as many crowds, businesses, NGOs, government ministries, hospitals, schools, and paramilitary groups as possible to take part in the parade at Kololo Airstrip.

On October 9, 2010, this entered a new phase: for the first time in Uganda’s history, nursery school infants were drafted into the march-past parade at Kololo.

Like the rest of society, these marching groups at Kololo have grasped the essential nature of Museveni’s regime in its latter stages.

It is essentially the Feudal Republic of Uganda that is now in place. Under this Feudal Republic, there is no law, no order, no standard, there is no defining national ethos except that which flows from the person of Museveni.

If this feudal lord, who governs Uganda, decrees that your bank loan be forgiven or that you get millions of dollars from Bank of Uganda, you be appointed ambassador, your goods come in tax-free, you be given land to build a factory in a wetland or national park, or that your company is given the budget to promote Uganda’s image abroad, then that is it. His word becomes legal writ and law.

If Museveni looks favourably upon you today, your life can be instantaneously transformed like in the children’s fairly tales: today you are in rags; tomorrow you are a minister. Today you are selling maize at a street corner; tomorrow you are the Chief Mobiliser for the NRM in eastern Uganda.

The question, then, is how do you get Museveni’s attention? You can send your school to march at Kololo, or you can publicly declare your undying support for him.

As a struggling Ugandan singer, you can compose a song titled “Amelia” whose lyrics sound curiously like an anthem in praise of the former Principal Private Secretary to the President, Amelia Kyambadde or you can write a song in praise of Museveni.

Either way, you will be guaranteed, not sales, but that one of these two will buy your master copy for 5,000 dollars, or that small radio stations in the countryside will be forced by RDCs to play these songs, as a way to justify their jobs, or when you the singer gets into trouble next time after fighting in a bar, the police will let you go scot-free or the president will pay your medical bills.

The Ugandan singer Bobi Wine captured this new order of things best in his 2006 song Kiwani, in which he had the lyrics “Buli omu asiba kiwani” (“Everybody engages in fraud”).

A good illustration of how deep this state of national kiwani has penetrated every corner and area of life, came in the Miss Uganda beauty contest in September. Apparently, there were three leading contenders: the contestant who was favoured by the audience, the one who was the choice of the judges, and the one preferred by the organisers.

Like so many such events, from elections to Uganda’s football administration, to the Pearl of Africa Music Awards, to the Miss Makerere beauty contest, to simple things like the choice of a cover subject for a newspaper or news magazine, the Miss Uganda contest resulted in the kind of controversy that flows from corruption, bribery of judges and officials that is now the Ugandan national character.

There are fraudsters in Kampala nicknamed “Cubans” and also termed “mercenaries”. These are the young men and women who perform an important role in the economy. Their work is to sit exams or write academic theses on behalf of busy civil servants and corporate executives.

These ghost writers are the real brains behind most of the Bachelors, MBAs, and PhDs in Uganda that Uganda’s middle class boasts today.

At another level, there is a whole group of professionals who have also developed and flourished around this fraudulent society.

A world of NGOs to fight or report on corruption has become a permanent feature of Ugandan life. So too have the NGOs, local and foreign, that have come to fill in the gap in the provision of basic social services and relief aid that has been created by the erosion of the state under Museveni.

Newspapers and radio stations that champion or claim to champion the fight against corruption have done well with audiences and publishing adverts and tenders by NGOs claiming or actually fighting corruption.

The media in general has also gained much by way of advertising from the many companies, investors, and individuals who either should never have been allowed to enter Uganda, or should have been expelled by now, or who should be in jail.

Journalists who have reported on corruption have become national stars. Those who take bribes in order to suppress damaging stories on corruption have also done well, judging by the flashy cars and expensive property they own.

Certain Pentecostal churches whose pastors are close to State House or which are generally sympathetic to the NRM government have gained much in prestige, contributions by their parishioners and occasional moral support or political and legal cover from the state.

On average, the salaries of most people in the civil service, the corporate and NGO community is only about one third of their monthly incomes. The other two thirds is topped up in this climate of hustling, bribes, tax evasion, raising vouchers and allowance claim forms, inflating invoices and tenders and outright theft.
[Children undergo paramilitary drills in Kololo]

Children undergo paramilitary drills in Kololo

Last month, David Mukholi, the editor of the Sunday Vision newspaper, said on a Wednesday journalists’ show on Vision Voice that news and investigation stories on corruption no longer sell.

This might be partly because the public has grown weary of reports on corruption, since they know nothing will be done about them anyway; but also it might suggest that corruption is now a majority culture, in the same way Christianity is the majority religion in Uganda, and so few are interested in having it exposed.

The state of lawlessness that characterises Uganda today has been amazingly beneficial to hundreds of thousands of Ugandans, especially in Kampala. This is because, like all systems once entrenched, it has taken on a formal, organised, routine, checks and balances character of its own.

And like all systems, to disrupt it is destabilising and can be a source of national instability as disrupting a system founded on merit and the observance of law and order.

When UPC party president Olara Otunnu called for a boycott of the 2011 general election unless the current Electoral Commission is reformed or changed, his call was opposed by the main opposition party the FDC and by a surprising number of UPC members.

This was odd, since the FDC has been a victim of rigged elections for a decade and should know better than to have faith that the 2011 election will be different. Once again, what normally defies logic in Uganda is, surprisingly, logical in its own way.

Most Ugandans know that the forthcoming election will be rigged. The NRM party primaries alone were a foreshadow of what is to come. However, there is more than meets the eye. Whenever elections loom, with them comes a whole industry from which many thousands of Ugandans gain and it trickles down to the ordinary people.

It is not just the impoverished villagers who the media usually portrays as receiving a pathetic bribe of sugar and soap.

Campaign managers, touts who traverse the villages rallying support, the printers who get the jobs to produce campaign posters, treasurers of candidates, candidates themselves, boda boda cyclists who blow their horns and transport supporters, the bars that sell booze to crowds, those who cook food to sell at rallies, journalists who take bribes to write in praise of or interview certain candidates on radio, men who spend all day playing Ludo or arguing about Manchester United who are suddenly elected councillors or even MPs--- all these gain in a major way from the elections, even though the occupant at State House might not change.

This election industry, with it characteristic bribes, unexplained money coming in from governments in the region trying to influence the outcome of the election in Uganda or political parties and trade unions in Europe, western embassies in Kampala, plays a vital role in the Ugandan economy and so there was no surprise that political parties that know for certain that 2011 will see, if anything, much more rigging than before, still felt they had to take part in it.

When Museveni finally leaves power some day, this is the legacy that will last the longest and take the longest and the greatest effort to uproot.

A generation of Ugandans will have been born that has no understanding whatsoever of what institutions mean, what merit is, what procedure and method are, and how to earn a living by the process of systematic, incremental work, followed by payment and personal savings.

They will not know or have the patience to queue up for anything, to wait for longer than a week for a tender or results of an interview to be made public.

The only thing they will have known and which works for them is the life of what in Kampala slang these days is termed “Okuyiya”, a term describing the gambling, scheming, lying, issuing bouncing cheques, acting the sycophant, bending or breaking laws and rules and evading taxes or doctoring academic certificates that is life in Uganda and how most people survive.

To every obstacle in their path, the solution is to call afande so-and-so, call somebody or State House, call up a cousin in intelligence, a brother in the army, a contact on the job interview panel, a friend in the Uganda Revenue Authority, or somebody at border immigration control.

Many Ugandans and foreigners lament the state of affairs in Uganda today, from the rundown infrastructure, roads, police stations, to the nepotism on corruption. In truth, this is largely a moralistic cry, usually characterised by crocodile tears.

The fact is, for the majority of Ugandans there is no system and way of life they can enjoy better than what they have grown used to in Uganda today.

In Uganda, you can toss a mineral water bottle out of a car window. You can drive on the left or the right, depending on what pleases you. You can zoom past pedestrians at a zebra crossing etc.

You can use three different names to transact business. A newspaper with a circulation of only 1,200 copies can get the same full-colour, full-page advert as a newspaper with a circulation of 35,000 copies, depending on who one bribes for the adverts.

At first one is tempted to feel sorry for doctors who work in government hospitals or police officers in their shabby offices, until one realises that they don’t seem to be that bothered.

This is because amid that confusion and broken down infrastructure are hefty benefits to be enjoyed. Families of arrested suspects and criminals can pay a CID officer or District Police Commander to release a relative.

Traffic policemen who stand on duty along roadsides are often not exactly suffering, when it is learnt how much they earn in bribes from offending drivers.

Teachers in miserable government schools or at Makerere University can either be paid to award marks to students for cash or sex.

Foreign businessmen and companies have also discovered this about Uganda and, while there is much lamentation by purists that Uganda is too corrupt to do business in, actually Uganda is just the right environment in which certain types of crafty companies and entrepreneurs can do business. It is a gangster’s paradise.

You import expired goods? No problem. Nobody will ask. You bring in unskilled labour from India. Kawa, life will go on. You evade taxes? Who pays taxes, anyway?

In this sense, Uganda has shaken off the last vestiges of the old colonial system of order, merit, method, standards, bureaucracy and moved on to a strange state of nature in which the country has one of the highest rates of social mobility on earth.

This is why many Ugandans don’t seem as bothered by the potholes in Kampala as the media expects them to be. Not that they don’t see or suffer through them. It is just that there are so many benefits that have also come with operating in Uganda, benefits that more than compensate for the lack or order, accountability, merit, bureaucracy and the rule of law.

Cabinet ministers do not have any real powers and they know it. However, they also know something else: what apparently appears like offices without powers actually do have certain hidden powers.

A prospective investor flies into Uganda from China or France and at some stage he gets to meet the minister in charge of the investor’s area of interest. To obtain the minister’s signature, the investor pays handsomely in a bribe.

So in that sense, all of Uganda’s cabinet ministers, ministers of state, resident district commissioners, members of parliament, permanent secretaries, commissioners, and a whole host of other public and civil service officials, while appearing to have no real authority in a system that barely functions, actually have much greater power than they would have enjoyed had Uganda had institutions that work.

Because of this, an entire middle class has emerged since 1986 that is built on dishonesty and fraud. So entrenched is it that any attempt to reform Uganda and genuinely root out corruption would destabilise the country.

Museveni found Uganda a struggling military-dominated, post-colonial republic in 1986. He will leave it a feudal state similar to an African kingdom of the 19th century.

5 comments:

I have spent time working in the IDP camps in the war zone of northern Uganda at the Sudan border. I keep in contact with people, dear saints and orphans, who are struggling to survive there.

Everyone should know that there is a stark contrast between conditions in the south, which has a nice standard of living, and in the war zone north of the White Nile, which is one of the most desperate places in the world, because of human-imposed devastation. It is believed by many of the people of the north, who are a different tribe from the ruling class people group of the south, that the forced removal of the people by Pres. Musevini's army from their rich farmlands into hideously overcrowded IDP camps where thousands died of disease and hunger and an entire generation lost its societal structure, was a purposeful strategy of genocide and exploitation of land by Musevini. Now credible evidence has come to light which supports this suspicion and it has been turned over to the Hague and to the UN.

I have been humbled and corrected in my attitudes and my thinking since answering the Lord's call to serve the Acholi people in the small ways He has opened up for me. At one time, I too, before actually researching the facts and going there and living a short time among the people, "drinking the kool-aid" of the American dominionist christian transformationalist propoganda, thought that Uganda was some sort of great example of a nation turning to christianity and being thus transformed into a kind of blessed promised land. So I must have mercy toward people who promote that error and guard against self righteousness. But I also must announce as boldly as I can that the truth in Uganda is exactly opposite what many naive christians believe or want to believe.

Thank you for posting these articles here, Proto. I thank you on behalf of the dear humble suffering brothers and sisters in the north.

American influence has produced some mind-bogglingly wicked fruit in that country and especially in its "churches." The prosperity gospel has gone on spiritual steroids there and it is hair-raising to read of the corruption, debauchery, perversion and exploitation occuring there as a matter of course, which you can read about if you simply peruse the country's two newspapers which are online daily. The website you link, Yesu Mulingi, is a clear voice of the true Church in east Africa. It would edify every American saint to read these pastors' articles.

The wicked fruit is a stumbling block to the true gospel. One cannot talk to a Ugandan about the need to be born again because of it. They have a stereotype they call the "born-agains" and it means the people of the worst of the prosperity perversion and every kind of charismania wierdness. Historically, it is the Anglican church in the south because of the British colonialization. Interestingly, the African Anglicans are breaking with the western Anglicans over liberalism and acceptance of homosexuality and such. In the north, it is historically Roman Catholic due to the missionizing of Italian Catholics in the 20's and 30's. I met several true converts to Jesus from the people who have been animist and spiritist, (witch doctors are still very much present and active in both the north war zone and in the south) though they are catholic in practice because that is all there is. The only infrastructure at all in the war zone is the RC church, and what has been temporarily done by international aid.

Child sacrifice is quite a problem in the whole country, as well as the trafficking of children for sale outside the country.

It bothers me that Americans go to Uganda and see "revival"????!!!! (In the south, travelling back from the war zone which is like another planet, I did see a “church” on every corner! Lots of weird stuff. I stayed with a mission orphanage run by Canadians in Kampala. Nice people, but living like rich mizungos even by the standards of the capital city. All of it sad, actually.) These Western pastors and missionaries must go with their agendas already set and interpreting what they encounter in ways that affirm their agendas. This is not what we are to do to be people of the Truth, who are to seek Truth, to expose evil done in darkness, to be humbly taught of the Lord and receive His mind on matters. "Caution, caution, caution!" I shout to anyone calling himself christian, who promotes or supports any interpretation, any cause, any government in this region, unless the Lord has truly led and taught you. The world is more complicated--and more wicked--than we Americans (I am generalizing here about Americans) are willing to face, and we do not understand how recent history and American policy in the world contributes to it. Yet we (generalizing) are quick to opine and pontificate about things we know nothing about in truth. That is why America is deemed as arrogant and ignorant and meddling by many of the world's people.

You cannot go wrong by following the Sermon on the Mount and the teachings of Jesus. Have no allegiances but to Christ and His gospel. But, tragically, a lot of mission theology nowadays is transformationalist, dominionist, intrinsically bigoted, and false, and harmful. You see fruit of it in east Africa. Be careful who and what you support.

[Sham] elections are coming up in Feb. and there could be violence, so please pray for the people and for the rulers.

Southern Sudan is in the midst of a referendum right now on whether to secede from the Islamist northern gov't. and become its own nation. The Dinka (highly christianized)and Acholi of Southern Sudan are sub-saharan while the ruling folks in the north are "Middle Eastern" as you pointed out. Might be good to form their own nation, though there is no infrastructure. Let us pray for them.